Hoist by one's own petard - in a way

Mr Onymous has shown himself to be of a somewhat impatient disposition, with a comment on my most recent (OK two weeks ago) post:

"This blog is intended to offer odds and ends of information that I hope will be interesting and amusing. Perhaps less amusing will be my occasional rants and metaphorical sighs about and at the world we live in, its governance and population."

yes please ...WHEN ??? 

For the time being it seems that the muse has deserted me, although in writing this, the idea occurs to me that perhaps there are amongst you those who are heartily sick of the Olympic/Paralympic Games, though probably not as heartily sick as I am.

Thanks largely to the greed of Bernard Charles Ecclestone, the BBC no longer provides TV coverage of all the Grands Prix, so today I had to make do with the coverage on Radio 5 of what was apparently a thrilling Italian Grand Prix.  This coverage was interrupted several times by someone droning on at great length about some marathon.  Yawn/Rage/Yawn/Rage

Until the next time

Pussy Riot & Tsar Valdimir

Tsar takes the salute

Picture source

Today I received an invitation from AVAAZ to sign a petition in support of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot whose members have been quite outrageously sentenced to two years' imprisonment for a protest made in a church.

Apparently there have been proposals in the European Parliament (that oh so unimpressive body) that sanctions be applied to the Russian elite; not a bad idea they appear to be a pretty dubious lot one way and the other - BP, never averse to making money gave up the Russian scheme as a bad job and I suppose that there may well have been many others who have experienced that peculiar poker-faced obstructionism that seems to flourish there.

Anyway Tsar Valdimir has continued to support the appalling Bashar Assad offering weasel words about "a political settlement" which puts him beyond the pale as far as this writer is concerned.

Here's a link if you feel inclined to offer your support to Pussy Riot.

Enemies of the State: Pussy Riot

Picture Source

Until the next time

THURSDAY

30/29

In Chester Burnett's words: "I'm sitting on top of the world"

Until the next time

I Wish I Could Write

Today, a very good friend telephoned and expressed the view that I really should cease my depressive outpourings here and indeed, remove those already written.

I explained that these diatribes or cries of anguish and angst serve as an "outlet" and that therefore they will remain.  Attentive regulars (bless you for your patience!) will have noticed that certain posts have actually been removed...

Matthew Arnold, son of the redoubtable Thomas of Rugby (see Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians) could certainly write - and understand; witness his poem Longing:

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth,

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

A man who could write I think.

Like Robert Frost in Reluctance; the last verse expresses my feelings very well:

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last long aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

  

Until the next time.

Love the Unfamiliar Name

[52/29/28]

Well, like all anniversaries, it had to come, and now it's here: what last year was the happy and glorious 11th; no more

The next miserable anniversary will be 30th August (i.e. T + 366).  All Thursdays remain as a weekly and poignant reminder of what was and what should have been.

I am grateful to the late Rosamond Lehmann who included the following two pieces in her autobiographical The Swan in the Evening.

"She turned away from me, and she went through the Fair;

And fondly I watched her move here and move there;

And she went on her way, with one star awake,

As the Swan in the evening moves over the lake."

                                                    (Trad.)

"Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove."

                                    (T.S.Eliot)

Poetry in this case is no comfort - just perhaps a little sympatique.

Edit: the exact anniversary in fact occurs at 01 26 on 12th August, but given the rest of what transpired a year ago, 11th is good enough.  I AM a pedant.

Until the next time

Killing a Few Minutes

In four minutes it will be 11th August 2012.

I have another depressing post already prepared for this tragic date; just waiting until midnight; I can then post the message and with luck, the pills will have begun to work.

This is no kind of life, no kind of life at all.

Sorry.

Ah! Just one minute to go...

Until the next time.